Spent One Year Anniversary in Madagascar!!!!

July 18, 2010

Madagascar!

This Friday I will have been in South Africa for 1 year. I can’t say that I miss America, but I do miss friends. My good friend, Lisa, was asked if I was planning to visit home during my two years here. I can imagine her answer, probably somewhat chagrinned, when she said that as long as there was some corner of Africa as yet unexplored, then I wouldn’t be home. So I can now add Madagascar to the areas that I’ve partially explored. I must say that two weeks there is not nearly long enough for me.

A year ago, my friend, Dennis, was transferred to Madagascar to work on a startup mining operation there. Needless to say, I started planning my trip just about then. Katherine and his wife, Mary, met us there and we spent a great time looking for lemurs, hiking in the Tsingy, and seeing what the markets had to offer. Seeing Katherine, Dennis, and Mary was definitely the highlight for me, but the lemurs were a close second.

This island nation is the 4th largest island in the world (Greenland, Baffin Island, and Borneo for Greg F.). It is definitely poorer than South Africa and last year’s political coup d’état didn’t help matters. On the island, the change in governments (new one isn’t recognized and old president is in exile in South Africa) is called the crisis and most of the people who we spoke to about it feel that life for all but the very wealthy is a lot worse. I’d say that although the island is rich in its ability to grow just about anything, the infrastructure doesn’t support getting the produce to the people and hence the people are not receiving adequate nutrition. The markets are beautiful in their abundance, but I would guess that the people in the villages are better fed than the ones in the cities. The fruit was so good that I think it might have inspired me to go on an island tour to see which one has the best fruits.

The capitol, Antananarivo, is built on all the high points. The low-lying areas are used as rice paddies. Rice alternates with clay brick making in one of the oddest crop rotations I’ve ever heard of. In the rainy areas in the south, the people grow 3 rice crops each year. This has got to be one of the most backbreaking jobs I’ve ever seen. Although I’m not a big fan of rice, I have a new appreciation for it from the women who do it all by hand in this nation. Although government buildings and palaces look relatively modern, the majority of the buildings looked to me like something right out of Pirates of the Caribbean, the Disney ride version. The streets are narrow and lined with markets just about everywhere we went. I walked around town the first day I was there and saw all sorts of life. Very interesting.

Madagascar is very difficult to navigate. The roads that exist are full of what they call ostrich holes, but I’d call them elephant holes. We hired drivers to take us around and of all the roads there was only one that I’d call mostly good. Otherwise, it can take 5 hours to go 90 km. I’m pretty sure most of the west coast is not road at all, but washed out river beds and I heard that they are not navigable during the rainy season. Katherine’s father thought we should just rent a car and go ourselves and I’m flattered that he thought we could. I’m not sure how the guys knew when to turn and getting on and off the river taxis was just a little more exciting than I think I want to attempt.

We did have an excellent opportunity to discuss matters with 4 of the current government ministers on a flight that we took in country. We blew it when we discovered just how high up they were after we landed and Mary happened to get off the plane in the middle of them. The entourage meeting them had all sorts of press coverage—I should have guessed at their importance when they were the only largish people we saw on the entire island. Surely, they are men with plenty and the government is supporting them just fine. It would have been great to discuss the road situation and the accessibility to tourism with them…our one chance on the whole trip to make a difference…rats.

On the west side of the island, Kirindy Forest showed us our first taste of lemurs and chameleons. The island separated from Africa and Asia something like 165 million years ago and the flora and fauna have been evolving in isolation ever since. Something like all the mammals, 90% of the reptiles, 75% of the flora, and 50% of the birds do not exist anywhere else on earth. We started our visit with a night walk and I think we were all amazed at our guide’s ability to spot inch long chameleons and mouse sized lemurs at night. We followed with a day walk and were continually surprised by the lemurs and their one mammalian predator, the fossa.

There are 100 or so species of lemurs and I think we saw maybe 15-20 of them in the two weeks we were there. The smallest is the size of a mouse and it scurries like a mouse as well. It is nocturnal and would fit in your fist pretty easily. The largest is diurnal and is about 3 feet tall with no tail. It lives in the rain forests of the highlands. There are many, many that are about the size of a cat so finding them in the forests is tough, but once you realize what they eat and about the height to look for them, spotting them becomes a bit easier. I enjoyed going out early in the mornings and walking through the forests quietly. In that way, I saw plenty of guys just waking up and getting their breakfast. The guides are amazing in their ability to find them and they are intrepid in their task of showing them to you. (You must hire a guide in the National Parks.)

The west coast has deciduous forests that were mostly barren when we visited during winter/dry season. The southern coast has spiny forests that are being clear-cut to create sisal plantations for the world’s rising demand for green packaging. And the east coast has the rain forests of the highlands. We decided that it would be tough to live in this cold, damp climate most of the time. Otherwise, despite being winter, it was hot and dry. Of course, each ecosystem has different lemurs, chameleons, frogs, birds, and trees that create a unique environment. Even the beach on the southern coast had fabulous tide pools that created within me a sense that I was killing something with every step I took.

We managed to get up to Bemaraha which is where the stone forests or Tsingy are located. National Geographic did a piece on this ecosystem in November 2009 and it is listed as a World Heritage Site. We hiked through this unique stone forest for an afternoon. Millions of years ago, a sea in which coral reefs formed covered this area. Through plate tectonics, the area rose above sea level and then the limestone formations have been eroded to form some unbelievable rock formations. Grand Tsingy has peaks 70 meters high interspersed with caves and tunnels. It is ideal for hiking especially since the National Park Service has created some trails with some climbing aids to get through the rough spots. This was definitely one the highlights of our trip.

Another spot to visit on the west coast is the Avenue des Baobabs. There are 6 species of Baobab tree that grow on Madagascar. In one area, they cover the area like a little Baobab forest and I’ve never seen anything like it. The other Baobabs that I have seen were largely on their own in Botswana. There is even a dwarf Baobab that is sold potted. I wish it were something that could be imported to Texas, as I’d definitely have one. The guides managed to get you there just at sundown so it is a beautiful site and getting out of the car after a 10 hour day of driving was welcome.

The national animal is the Ring Tailed Lemur—and if a raccoon had a long tail and was a primate, it would be a Ring Tailed Lemur. We saw them in Berenty on the south coast in the spiny forest. I must say that these guys are bold as brass. They will steal your breakfast if you aren’t vigilant. They will grab your hand to get your tangerine peel if you aren’t looking. They will gang up on you to intimidate you into handing over your banana peel. And they will get into the lemur proof trashcans. Nevertheless, you will laugh and once you know that they are not aggressive, you will make Dennis hold them off while you eat your breakfast. He says they feel like lean cats and I can say that their “hands” are soft and leathery even if they didn’t get my tangerine peel. I could watch lemurs all day.

One of the biggest lemurs is called a Sifaka. This species was the only type of lemur that we saw “walk” on two legs. The back legs are longer than the front so they had a little sort of dance to move across from one area to another. It was funny to watch them. Sifaka and Ring Tailed Lemurs both live in the spiny forest and no one knows exactly how they manage to jump onto all the prickly things in this forest without getting hurt. It is hard to imagine anything spikier than the things in this forest, but these lemurs both go from limb to limb as if they don’t feel a thing.

We visited a school on the south side as well as the sisal plantation. In the village, Katherine drew a crowd with the wheelchair. She let some of the villagers try it the chair while she gave directions from a bench. Some of the men were so impressed with her that she snagged a marriage proposal and the fellow was even willing to give up ALL his other wives if she would just stay. She said how honored she was, but that she had to get back to Canada shortly.

Some of the guys we were hiking with in the forests went out of their way to gather things to show us. In this manner, we saw snakes, owls, chameleons, lemurs, and the odd cockroach. These are the kinds of bugs that you see in museums. It is hard not to offend the presenter of a cockroach, but the natural girlish reaction is a little girly scream—same reaction as a snake. Who knew?

Nearly all the guides were game to take the wheelchair places that they had never taken one before, but I thought that Katherine should have let them all try it BEFORE the hikes instead of after. She makes it look easy, but I can tell you from experience that it isn’t. As we were leaving one place, the woman told Kath that she was amazing, but in her Malagasy accent it sounded like she said that Katherine was amusing. Needless to say, Mary and I jumped all over it as Katherine has amused people the world over. In fact, sometimes life would be a little easier if she wasn’t so amazing/amusing.

The smaller lemurs are prey for owls and snakes, but the fossa is the only mammalian predator that the lemur has. I’ve heard it said that the fossa is hard to find in the wild, but in fact, it wasn’t hard for us. We saw it at Kirindy Forest on our first day out. I had washed out some trousers and a shirt. As some of you know, I hate to do laundry. I probably won’t complain about it ever again when I have a washing machine, but it is done by hand in Madagascar and in South Africa and I did it by hand at Kirindy. I hung my shirt and trousers outside on the line to dry. After all-night flights and then staying up all night talking, then driving most of the day, naps were in order. I am not a good napper—I don’t do it unless I’m sick generally, so I got up after a bit and went to watch the guys play bocce. The fossa crawled into our cabin through the open door and woke Mary up by snuffling around my tennis shoes. She shooed it out and later that evening we went on our night walk. I didn’t have my flashlight on the way back so I helped Katherine into the cabin up the steps and then headed to bed myself. The next morning, I discovered my trousers ripped to shreds and eaten by the fossa. They were beyond repair and THEY WERE CLEAN! Mary had noticed them the night before when we came back from our walk, but didn’t realize the import. I was unhappy at this turn of events, but alas, what can you do when the fossa eats 1/3 of your wardrobe. Luckily my shirt was unharmed and Katherine had extra trousers.

The rain forests of the highlands are pretty fabulous for vegetation, chameleons, and frogs. I kept thinking of my friend, Susan V., as she would have loved the chameleons and the frogs. The guide here, Levi, would go around saying things like “I’ll just find you another frog” and then he would. These guys are the size of your pinky nail and just like what you see in museums. He’d find chameleons and then catch grasshoppers and place them at least a body length away from the chameleon so we could see how long their tongues were…as long as their entire body including the tail. The smallest chameleon is about an inch long and the largest is about 20 inches long. They can move their eyes 180 degrees…amazing and they change color too. The largest lemur, the Indri, lives here in the rain forest and the mines for nickel and titanium are in this area. We went to Andasibe and hiked off trail to find the brown and wooly lemurs. I could have done without the leeches, but the hikes were fabulous. Orchids grow wild on trees all over Madagascar, but the rain forests had more than the other areas.

We figured out at least two super business ideas. One is to fly tourists to Bemaraha in a floatplane that bypasses a strenuous drive through dry riverbeds and would allow tourism in both wet and dry seasons. The other is in Tana at the craft market. If one were to set up a shipping stall that took credit cards, a fortune could be made from tourists who can’t get large items home without shipping them.

All in all, Madagascar is beautiful. The countryside is idyllic, but on closer inspection you can see how poor it is. Work is all done by hand, water is hauled from rivers and I assume boiled, trees are cut down to create charcoal to heat and cook with, transportation and infrastructure is pretty much non-existent and the people are incredibly charming and nice. The roadside markets are lush and the food is fabulous. Two weeks is not nearly long enough to visit and I wish I had more time there.

Conservation is facing an uphill battle, as it is difficult to explain why the forests should be preserved when sisal and charcoal are such important parts of the economy and represent food and warmth. Mining will help create jobs, but again at the cost of the forests. Although the companies try to reforest as much as they can, pipelines need some clear-cutting to exist. The current government isn’t doing anything to repair the roads and the one good road will deteriorate rapidly with the lack of drainage and the heavy truck traffic. Since the government isn’t recognized, foreign aid has ceased to come into the country. The people, when asked, are just waiting and hoping that the old president will come back. Tourism is recovering from the 2009 coup, but is not yet at the 2008 levels. In 2008, you had to book 1-2 years ahead of time. We managed to book about 2 days ahead of time. Time will heal some of the damage, but in the meantime, this island cannot feed itself and there isn’t enough money to import what is necessary. Peace Corps has just re-established the program in Madagascar and I must say it is a great opportunity to live for 2 years…in that time, I just might see all the things that I wanted to see.

(There are more pictures on Facebook so go there to the album if you want to see even more!)

Happy Father's Day!!!!!!

June 20, 2010

I can’t believe it has been nearly 2 months since I last wrote. I wish I were more like another volunteer here who manages to write at least 3 or 4 times a month, sometimes more. I know she is just as busy as I am, but she is really dedicated about writing in her blog and letting her friends and family at home what is happening with her. One day, I’ll be more like that or you all will just have to wait for the book.

The school term has flown by. We are in the middle of the winter break here. The school system shut down a couple of weeks early in order to accommodate the World Cup games. The authorities want fewer cars on the road during the games, but I’m not sure how much less traffic this creates in the urban areas. In the rural areas, it doesn’t change anything since we really have few cars anyway. The conflicts on the road come from donkeys, goats, sheep, potholes, and drunks both walking and driving. Nevertheless, school is out. Pics of kids from last day of school.




























Our schools competed in an area-wide choir competition at the beginning of May. The primary schools’ competition was held on the Saturday. Our Grade 1-3 choir placed second, but the older Grade 4-6 kids didn’t do as well. I took a

cross-stitch project with me because there was a lot of sitting. The number of people who thought cross-stitch should be taught was huge, but I haven’t been able to find even DMC floss or Aida cloth anywhere locally. The middle school competition was held on Sunday. They also placed second for each of the songs they sang. For the middle school, this entitled them to move on to the larger area provincial competition that was held the following weekend. Again, they placed second. They sang 4 songs, but there was another local school that sang so well that I knew they would be hard to beat.

An odd thing happens in South Africa. The funding year for the schools is disjointed from the funding year of the government who is in charge of the schools. So for a complete term, nearly, the schools have no funds. This means they cannot buy paper, ink, electricity (they beg to keep the power on from the large power company), salaries are foregone, etc. It is a tense time for the principals who have to manage this problem. Some are better at budgeting than others, but all are affected to some degree by the problem.

Consequently, I convinced my supervisor to take off one Friday afternoon and go to town to see Iron Man 2. We corralled his wife into joining us and just escaped for an afternoon. Going to the movies is not as easy as it once was—it is several hours away, but worth it if you can get there. There are giraffes and rhinos along the way. Any anytime someone goes to town, especially with a car as opposed to a taxi, there are errands to be run and things to be purchased. We had a great time and laughing/losing oneself in a movie is a great way to forget the stress of work occasionally.

Fall here in South Africa has been abrupt…it went from really hot to really cold pretty quickly. During the summer, although I complained about the heat, there were days when it was cold and rainy and I used my light jacket. Now, I wear my jackets, hat, and gloves most of the time. It can be warm if you are outside sitting in the sun with no wind, but that isn’t all that often. I now completely understand about stocking caps, warm socks, flannel pajamas, and a hot water bottle…all that works wonders if you also have two blankets. South Africa continues to be a country of extremes.

The leaves on the trees have turned, the flamingoes in the nearby saltpans have migrated, the sunbirds are less frequent, but the starlings, the canaries, and the crows stick around. I’ve also seen some of the birds of prey around still too. The ants have retreated, but I still see the yellow mongoose families around a lot. It is fun to watch them running around marking their territory.

Oddly, we’ve got baby lambs at this time of year. I thought that babies naturally were born in the spring when food is plentiful. I’m not sure how I thought this happened—I guess I never gave it much thought really. When I asked Kgosi about it, he said it was an accident that mostly occurs because there is no fence. So I guess you can’t keep rams away from ewes when they are determined no matter what season it is.

Speaking of birthdays, a bunch of the kids who hang with me have birthdays in June. They are all turning 12 years old so we had a birthday party. The boys were talking about it for weeks. I went to Mafikeng and got balloons, and some presents. (Their advice to me was “don’t forget the presents”). I also bought the stuff to make a cake and sandwiches. So in the end, we had tuna and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips and soda, and a French vanilla cake with chocolate butter cream frosting—blue candles. I bought a tablet and gel pens, a soccer ball, some ear buds, a key holder and flashlight, and some candy. I also downloaded Tetris and Pacman onto my iPod. Sonja and I saw some fake teeth that were made from gum. I thought they were hideous, but Sonja was dead on when she said the boys would love them. I bought them and she was completely right. The boys morphed into some kind of hunchback character when they wore those teeth. It was funny. Kathy sent along another soccer ball and Sonja provided some more candy. All in all, it was a great party. One of the boys has his birthday in October and another girl in September so I imagine the next party will be then. I’ve already been told that a watch would be a great gift.

Some friends from Austin sent me a great gift box of teas, mouse pads, and chocolate chips. My friend, Anita, works at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf so she asked me if I could take some pictures of us drinking the teas. She sent me Apricot tea and Pomegranate Blueberry tea—these come in fantastic tins. I took the teas to the primary school on the last day of school for a little tea party along with some chocolate chip cookies. Talk about the best tea party in South Africa…first smelling and admiring the most beautiful tea bags in the world. We get a

generic black tea here so flavored teas are a great treat. Then tasting the teas…they are both so wonderful that there is no way to choose just one. Luckily, we all discovered that you might use these tea bags at least 3 times with no problem so there was a lot of tea consumed. And now as I continue to drink tea, I am looking forward to using these beautiful tins to hold all manner of items. We use everything here and something as beautiful as these tins will go a long way. Oddly, other volunteer friends who have been here also prize these tins, even over the tea they contain. I love the tea first, but the tins will come in handy!

One funny thing from the tea party, when I was asked how many cookies they each could take, I replied, “you may take as many as you like”. This created a huge uproar…”NO”, everyone cried. I was told that I “must say how many each could have otherwise people wouldn’t leave any for others.” The thing that is ironic here is that everyone shares everything. If someone is eating an orange and I walk by, I will be given half. If there is one computer and 5 kids, they take turns and find a game that 4 of them can play at once. If there is a shirt that you admire, you might find it in your closet. So if you had a handful of cookies and someone wanted some, you’d hand them over and never even complain. You’d think three-dozen cookies would easily cover 13 people, but they go fast. As far as I know, everyone got some.

I’m now getting ready to leave for two weeks in Madagascar. I’ll take the camera, but more importantly Katherine is meeting me there so she’ll take all the good pictures. I told Dennis when I was coming picking dates where my leave corresponded to his leave and then called Katherine and Mary, his wife, and told them to meet me there. We will have a great time although Dennis is expressing grumpiness about not having a say in the matter. (He did, he told me his leave dates.) We plan to visit the lemurs, of course, and the national parks where the stone formations have been listed as one of the World Historic sites. It seems hard to get around there, but that has never stopped us before so I’m looking forward to the break and seeing longtime friends.

In the meantime, the World Cup goes on. The vuvuzelas have turned into the national instrument—I like them, but there are definitely two schools of thought on the matter. USA will likely go on to round 2, but I think our SA Bafana Bafana might be planning to disappoint us all. There have been great articles in the New York Times though showing more about South Africa and the distance they’ve come in 15 short years since the end of Apartheid. It is great to be here this month, but I’m also pretty happy to be meeting friends in less than a week.

I’ll send a trip review when I get back in the middle of July…until then, Happy Father’s Day!